


Color and Light

by Queue



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conservation of energy: heat rising fast in my body as the worst of it cools in Ray's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Color and Light

"God, heat sucks."

I lower the copy of the _Miami Herald_ that came with our hotel room (at least it's not the usual and execrable _USA Today_) and raise a blandly inquiring eyebrow at Ray over the top of it. "You love heat, Ray. You love sunshine, at least, although of course--"

"Not the same thing, Fraser, and you know it." Ray tosses the white notebook of conference material onto the low bureau near the door, where it lands with an emphatic thump and sheds a sheaf of loose papers across the bureau's top. His hair is drenched with sweat at the temples, and his grey t-shirt shows dark patches everywhere: beneath the straps of his holster, its ordinary leather-brown dampened almost to black; under his arms; all along the long line of his spine. His scent, hot and sharp, fills the room, and my fingers tighten on the edges of the newspaper.

"I mean, yeah, okay, there's a whatsit, a cause-and-effect relationship there a lot of the time, and ordinarily I am all about those causes and effects." He leers at me, such a weary shadow of his usual wicked grin that I'm surprised to find my cheeks flushing anyway under his gaze. Pavlovian, really. Months now we've been doing this, being this--whatever "this" is--and I'm still so unaccustomed to being looked at with intent. Disconcerting. I shake myself mentally and turn my attention back to Ray, who's still talking as he empties his pockets onto the discarded paperwork.

"–and light, they're both good things, separate and together--remind you of anyone, Frase?--but not in Miami at the height of summer. Not if you're a born-and-bred Chicago guy who's used to a little real weather, a little cold mixed in with his hot. Contrast, Fraser. Makes life worth living, you know? And a convention center full of cops in Florida in August is one big boring sweaty mess of sameness, even if the whole international-cooperation thing means break time sounds like the UN on a busy day. Cause and effect." Ray snorts, sitting heavily on the bed and pulling one boot up to wrestle with the laces. "I'd like to cause my boot upside the head of whatever genius chose the hottest city in Florida for this party and effect some pain on their sorry ass."

"Anatomically improbable, Ray," I point out. "And leaving aside the vexed questions of event planning for the moment, surely you could have packed other choices from your wardrobe, limited though it is, that would have given you something more climate-appropriate to wear here than jeans and khakis."

"You dissing my fashion sense, Fraser?" Ray drops the second boot and shakes one long finger at me in mock reproach. "This from the man who lets his bosses tell him how to dress, even when he's sitting in a hotel room a whole entire country away from anyone who actually cares?"

I sigh. "The RCMP has uniform standards, yes. I agreed to uphold those standards, along with a great many others, when I made the choice to join them. I'm here representing my country, just as you are. In that capacity, it's incumbent upon me to wear the uniform that symbolizes that representation. To the best of my knowledge, however, the Chicago Police Department does not require a uniform of its members. Why not, therefore, choose more comfortable--"

"Everybody's got a uniform, Fraser." Ray's back is turned to me, its elegantly wiry lines twisted as he divests himself of holster and t-shirt, but his tone makes it clear I've touched a nerve. "Some of 'em are just more official than others."

Hm. There's clearly something here I don't--yet--understand about Ray. I'd like to. I need to. It's equally clear, however, that this is not the time to press him on the subject. Something about the day--the heat, the language barriers, the enforced hours of sitting crowded between walls--has rubbed him too raw for real conversation.

And there are, of course, other options.

"Understood, Ray," I say mildly, holding my hands up in a placatory manner when he trains his skeptical glare on me. "Truly."

"Good. Okay. Christ, I'm hot." Jeans slipping down his hips to show the sweat-dampened edge of dark green boxer briefs, Ray crosses to my corner of our room and sits on the corner of the second bed, running one of the hotel's crisp white hand towels roughly over his hair. "Sorry, Fraser. I do fine with heat most of the time, but every once in a while my inner thermostat goes off the rails and the results aren't real pretty. Makes me cranky. Don't say it--" He holds up his free hand, palm towards my face, and I close my mouth on the obvious retort, smiling at him. "Smartass. Guess I'm a bad influence. Go, me. Anyway. Sorry. I'll cool off and straighten out pretty soon."

"Don't straighten out on my account, Ray," I tell him, sliding out of the chair onto my knees. His eyes widen, although whether that reaction's caused by the pun or my pose isn't clear. I turn and shuffle backwards just enough to push the chair I've been sitting in away from the tiny stainless-steel refrigerator installed in the corner of the room--a clear afterthought, given the overcrowded floor plan, but welcome nonetheless. I open the refrigerator's door and rummage in the even tinier inner freezer compartment for one of my earlier purchases. "If memory serves, you expressed some desire for a little cold with your heat. I believe I have just the thing."

Ray reaches out and takes the frozen treat from my hand, turning it and squinting at the frosty red-white-and-blue label. His eyes widen again. "A genuine Bomb Pop! Jesus, Fraser, I haven't had one of these since I was young enough to run after the ice-cream truck. Oh, man, I remember loving these. Where in the hell did you find this?"

"The pharmacy in the lobby has a surprisingly eclectic selection of snacks and desserts." I sit back on my heels, watching as he tears the wrapper open and licks up the side of the popsicle. His eyes close and he smiles, open-mouthed, around the shiny tip of the thing, his lips already crimsoned and wet. I clench my hands into fists on my thighs--mustn't touch without asking, no matter the provocation--and shift my knees farther apart, my nipples tightening against the fabric of my Henley. God, the _sounds_ Ray is making, the groans of pleasure, the rapt expression on his face. It's all I can do not to come up off my knees and take his mouth for my own and the hell with the whatever-it-is, all I can do to stay still and just watch. Conservation of energy: heat rising fast in my body as the worst of it cools in Ray's.

Finally Ray finishes the thing and emerges a little from his pleasure-induced trance. He pulls the stained wooden stick of the popsicle from his mouth and sighs. "Oh, man, I feel better. Think I might live, even. Don't know why, but that hit the spot in the best possible way." He blinks, then looks down at me, his serious expression at odds with his wildly spiked hair, still dark blond with sweat, and the purple drips and streaks that stripe his chest. "Fraser, you shouldn't-- I don't know how you knew that would work, which obviously it did, and Jesus, I'm grateful, you have no idea. But you didn't--you know you don't have to do this. Take care of me. I can do that myself, right?"

"I know I don't have to, Ray. I wanted to. It was my--" My voice cracks, and I swallow hard. "My pleasure."

"Yeah?"

"Yes. Very much so."

He runs his gaze over my body where I'm kneeling before him, and the full-bore version of that wicked grin appears on his face. "So I see, now that I look for it. Popsicle worked for you, too, huh? Got you going? Got you hot?"

I lick my lips. "You have no idea."

Ray's grin widens. "Oh, I think I do. Question is, what are you gonna do about it?"

"Nothing, Ray," I say, as firmly as I can given the circumstances. "You're obviously overheated and clearly tired as well. It would be irresponsible of me to exacerbate either condition by making physical demands of you at this point. I'm perfectly capable of governing my desires until you've recovered some of your energy. I can wait."

"I can't." Ray leans back on his hands and spreads his legs wider. "I'm doing just fine now, Fraser. Just dandy, thanks to your little cool-down present there. And I got a physical demand for you."

"Oh?" I do my best imitation of innocence, but I can feel the tell-tale flush creeping up my chest and into my face. I suspect the fact that I'm suddenly kneeing my way towards where he's half-sprawled on the bed is also something of a giveaway.

"Yeah." He brings one hand around and begins to flick open the fly buttons on his jeans, hissing a little as the cloth-covered bulge of his growing erection fills the gap. I reach him in time to open the last button myself, and the hiss turns into a groan through gritted teeth as my fingers brush against him. He shudders, hastily putting his hand back on the bed to brace himself again, and his hips arch into my touch.

"And what might that be?" I grip his hips with both hands, shifting him forward and tilting his groin slightly up, then lean in close and mouth at his erection, wetting the fabric down. I blow across the spot I've dampened, lick out at it strongly with the tip of my tongue. I can see his arms shake, hear the high-pitched whine he emits above my head. He's not going to last long. Hah. Good.

"Bet--bet you can g-guess, smart man," he says breathlessly, hips twisting under my hands.

"I might have an idea, yes. Lift up," I tell him, and before I finish the command he's lifted his ass off the bed, balanced on hands and long bare feet, panting. I slide my fingers under both waistbands and ease the fabric over, all the way down, and off; I want him spread open to me, not hobbled by his "uniform." I straighten my back, cup my hands around the lower curve of his buttocks, and lean in, mouth watering. Before I quite make contact, however, he puts one hand in my hair and the other under my chin and stops me, tilting my head back until we're looking into one another's eyes.

"Take your shirt off, Ben. Let me touch your skin while we-- Let me touch you."

Even if I wanted to refuse that demand--which I have absolutely no desire to do--the expression on his face would stop me. Another thing to think about later, that look and what it might say. Right now I have more...importunate things to do. I shrug the suspenders off each shoulder in turn, then take my hands off him long enough to pull the Henley off over my head. I don't know where it lands when I drop it. I don't care. I raise an inquiring eyebrow at him again--hardly blandly, this time--and he nods in satisfaction, his hands coming up to grip my shoulders as my own go back to his ass.

And we begin to finish.

I have time to notice that the bed is a good height for us, for this--I do not have to bend my neck unduly, Ray does not have to lean down to me--and that its hotel-beige coverlet is scratchy and uncomfortable by any definition.

And then my mouth, my senses fill with Ray.

Hot, soft, slick skin against my tongue and the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat; salty slickness, too, on my lips when I pull back to mouth over the shaft of his cock, so that every so often I can't help but lick out to taste him. Solid weight stretching the muscles of my jaw as I take him further in, then, the tiny flick of invited ache ratcheting my arousal higher. That familiar smell, deepened by the day he's waded through and strengthened by his arousal, intense and unclassifiable and--yes--beloved. The rough scratchy tickle of hair against my lips, my cheeks, my face; a distant warm echo against my palms and fingertips as I gather him into me, encouraging him, telling him wordlessly it's safe to let go. The force of his hands, curved over my shoulders, pulling _me_ to _him_; the strong pressure of his legs, wound around my hips, urging me to thrust against the side of the bed in time with his thrusts into my mouth.

And, because this is Ray and talking is one of the (many) things he does best, there is also the constant buzz and rumble of how he feels, of what I make him feel. "God, God, so good, Fraser, Ben, _Ben_. Can't-- can't look at you, _want_ to look, want to _watch_, _can't_ watch, gonna come if I-- the way you _look_, on your knees for me, all--ah, ah, shit--hard under your uniform and hard under my hands, Jesus, so hot... Always knew--hnnn--there had to be, ah, God, that something good would come from that oral thing you-- yeah, yeah, there, like that, oh, nnnn, nnnn, _nnnn_, yyyyessss...." His breathless banter dissolves at last into wordless groaning, and that in and of itself sets off my orgasm, quiet and shivery and distinct: that Ray, hyperarticulate Ray, can be brought to this point of incoherence, and by _me_...

I still my hands on his hips, gripping him hard, riding cresting and diminishing waves of pleasure until I can be certain of continuing without hurting him. He makes a distressed sound when I pull my mouth off him, gasping in the aftermath of my climax, and gathers himself enough to place, again, a trembling hand in my hair and one under my chin to force my eyes to him.

"Did you-- Are you-- "

I manage to nod at him, smile shaken from my face as another aftershock hits, trusting he knows me well enough to see and understand. He slides the hand in my hair down to cradle the other side of my face, lifts me to him, and kisses me, once, slowly and softly. I make an embarrassing noise into his mouth and he groans back at me, hips hitching so that the tip of his cock smears a hot wet spot onto my chest. Ducking my head away from his hands, I close my mouth on his cock and suck strongly, then relax my throat and pull him all the way in.

All that noise, all that talk, and after all that he comes without a sound.

*****

After that, the idea of returning to the conference center is the very definition of anathema. Thankfully, the schedule for the remainder of the day leaves both of us without any required commitments for the remainder of the afternoon and evening, so we are free to do what is necessary: that is, to shower together and collapse.

Sliding into sleep, arms around Ray's chest and face buried in his neck, I find myself licking out against the salty skin without volition. Ray twitches against me, and one hand comes up to cover mine where it lies over his heart. "Ah, God, Fraser, spirit's willing, 's just, the flesh needs a couple of hours, eh? You want to lick something, there's still popsicles in the fridge, if they haven't melted by now."

"They'll keep," I say into the nape of his neck. I lick out again against the fine short hairs there, purely for the sake of feeling him fail to keep the strong shiver from wracking his body. "Besides which, I'm not-- I don't--"

"Spit it out, Fraser. I'm awake now, so you might as well." Ray gathers himself, turns in my arms and looks at me, long fingers warm against the side of my face robbing his response of any sting it might have held. "This about your thing against refined sugar? Because I have to tell you, I grew up on a steady diet of the stuff, and seems to me I'm doing just fine, thanks. So--"

"No." I hold my breath for a moment, though I'm not entirely certain why. "No, it's not. I--" My throat closes, suddenly and without warning. I clear it and try again. "It's that I-- I don't want dessert, Ray. Snacks. I don't want temporary refreshment. I want--"

"I know, Fraser." Ray's gaze is level, and unexpectedly clear.

"No, Ray, you don't understand. I want--"

"I _know_, Fraser." Ray's hands--only now do I notice he's wrapped the other around the back of my neck--tighten over my skin. "I also know you can have it."

Only when he slides one hand into my hair, the tips of his fingers pressing lightly against my scalp, do I realize I've tensed against him from toes to crown. "I. Ah."

"Trust me, Ben." Ray's eyes close, and he tucks his head under my chin. "You can trust me. You ought to know that by now."

I close my eyes against the promise of that statement, too much for me to take in my overheated state. Now, anyway. Later....well. "Understood, Ray."

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from Stephen Sondheim. I doubt he'd approve, but I can't help that. Written 6-7 March 2010 for the LJ comm stop_drop_porn to the prompt "frozen treats."


End file.
